Paying such licensing fees for photos and videos is a common practice among morning news programs, which use them to skirt news division policies that prohibit paying for interviews. But now it appears that ABC may have paid to license an interview that was purchased outright.

According to Joann Killeen, Nadya Suleman's publicist, RadarOnline gave Angela Suleman $40,000 for the exclusive.

"I had to put a gag on Nadya's mother, who sold her out to RadarOnline," she told LA Weekly. "They paid her $40,000 to sell [Nadya] out, and she can't talk about her daughter for three months."

In an interview earlier this week, RadarOnline managing editor David Perel said his organization paid the celebrity photo agency Splash News to license photos used in the piece, but refused to say whether Angela Suleman herself benefited financially. When pressed by a reporter on the subject, he hung up the phone.

An ABC News spokesman today reiterated that the network paid simply to license the footage, but had no other comment.